The Nature of Blood (19 page)

What I now know of the condition I've learnt largely because of Eva Stern.
Not because I possess any intimate knowledge of her case history. I hardly
knew her. I interviewed her just the once. But it was she who started me thinking
about the problem in general. These days they call me an expert, or more properly
a specialist, but initially I could find only the odd article. I have to admit
that I was guessing as I was going along. Not entirely satisfactory, but I
couldn't afford to be too precious. These people's conditions were generally
chronic. They needed time to forget, on the one hand, and on the other hand
time to learn to trust people again. Sadly, neither of these processes can
be rushed. Eventually, we all have to submit to the whim of time. However,
I couldn't help wondering what the situation must have been like over there.
I knew there had to be thousands of these survivors, and as a result there
would be countless fellows doing research in this area. After the situation
with Eva, I thought about doing a paper myself. About their clearly defined
emotional anaesthesia, or psychic numbing. Eva, in fact all of them, they
were so detached. But, at least to begin with, I didn't have enough information.

My wife smiles, and I reach over and clutch this faithful jewel to my bosom.
The light from the lamp illuminates the sheen of her skin and I almost swoon
with delight. She is both smooth and unblemished, and beneath her breast I
can feel the gentle pounding of her heart. Her legs are gracefully entwined
in the confusion of the sheet, but with one hand I reach down and strip away
the offending garment. Tonight there is no reason to worry that our bedroom
hours might be interrupted by messengers from the doge, or concern ourselves
with the furtive nature of our coming together. We are man and wife in a union
known broadly to all, and acknowledged by the doge himself. There is time
for love, then our revels, then more love. And then, when my duties here on
Cyprus achieve a happy conclusion, we shall return home to Venice and commence
our new life of peace in the remarkable city-state. She whispers my name.
And again, my name.

Margot died on a cold grey morning in a country that was not her own. After she left her parents, and her sister Eva, she spent eighteen months in hiding at the top of a house in a tiny room which held only a single bed, a chair and a tall wardrobe. She was not allowed to leave the room, she was not allowed to use the bathroom, she was not allowed to have any contact with her former life. Her Mama and Papa had explained to her that, depending on how things developed, the hiding parents might let her live openly among them. Alternatively, for her own safety, they might choose to lock her up. They chose to lock her up. On the day of their separation, Eva sat on Margot's bed and stared idly through the window as her sister packed her suitcase. As the day faded, Margot told Eva about some of the things she had discussed with her new friends. The most important news was that Peter had heard of Uncle Stephan, and apparently their uncle was a real hero. And then the man arrived, pocketed the money and took the seventeen-year-old Margot away, and from the moment she stepped out of her parents' four-storey house she was no longer a child. A nice couple, they climbed the stairs, and brought her food, and permitted her to whisper her Jewish prayers, but otherwise she was to be quiet at all times. (They told a frightened Margot about the searches. Many had been discovered. And there were terrible rumours about their fate.) Above her bed they hung a crucifix, which she ignored. They encouraged Margot to practise how to hold her nose so that she might sneeze quietly. Quiet, like a cat. Eventually Margot discovered an imaginary friend named Siggi, who never spoke. And from behind closed doors, Margot listened to her country change, while inside she, too, was changing. To experience loneliness at any age is painful, but so young, and without the warm memories to offset the bewildering isolation and the worried speculation. It marks a person. She could feel this. A year passed and she grew accustomed to watching the early daylight at the edge of the curtains, and then witnessing the sun lighting up the floral pattern of the wallpaper. She thought all the while of Mama and Papa, and she tried to forgive them for turning her over to these people. In particular, Margot thought of her little sister Eva, and how once, when they were younger and playing together, she had kicked her. Margot thought endlessly of her cruelty and she hoped that her dear sister might have forgiven her. Apparently, there was no way of communicating with Eva. Her hiding father told her that things were very bad, and then one night, when his wife was out, he came to visit her. He looked at her, and touched her, but Margot dare not scream, for to scream would be to betray her hiding place.
(Right now you're a very pretty girl, but as you get older your racial character will show.)
And then he kissed her, and he tried to open her lips with his big mouth, and Margot felt the weight of his heavy hands upon her. How hard this man concentrated as he pushed, the beads of sweat popping on to his brow, individual, evenly spaced. Margot began to count. Siggi said nothing. And then he peeled himself clear of her body and left. Inside she bled, and her mind tumbled down a flight of stairs and struck its head. During the night, the rain fell like applause and Margot remembered that Papa used to say that a storm was nothing more than God moving around his furniture. In the morning she awoke to discover her nightgown gathered up about her waist, and her face bathed in the thin spokes of light that filtered around the edge of the curtains. As she lay curled in shame, she realized that her swollen tongue was now too large for her dry mouth. She made a decision. Margot swung her legs off the side of the bed and felt the damp chill of the linoleum. She would cut her hair short, her thick fluent hair that Peter liked to touch. Cut it off. When, a week later, the man visited her again, she slid to the floor so she would not fall, and then she screamed. Both she and her hiding parents were escorted down the three flights of stairs and emptied out into the street. The light dazzled her and she raised an arm to protect her eyes. The hiding parents went one way and Margot another, towards a train, her hands lacing and unlacing as she walked. One year later, in a country to the east that was not her own, she died on a cold grey morning, naked among naked strangers. She paid dearly for the sin of being born.
(Did you think of me that morning as I stumbled naked and shivering towards my death? Did you think of me?)

The process of gassing takes place in the following manner. The helpless victims
are brought into a reception hall where they are instructed to undress. Most
keep their underwear about them, but they are quickly encouraged to remove
these last vestiges of modesty. In order to maintain the illusion that they
are going to shower, a group of men dressed in white coats issue each person
with a small bar of soap and a towel. The victims are then ushered into the
gas chamber in such ludicrous numbers that the illusion is immediately shattered.
In the gas chamber there is no room for the victims to turn around, let alone
raise their arms up above their heads. In order to introduce yet more people
into this limited space, shots are often fired to encourage those near the
door to push towards the back. Those in the far corners are sometimes crushed
to death before the procedure even begins. Once everybody is inside, the heavy
doors are slammed shut, and sealed and bolted from the outside. There is no
escape. After a short interval, which allows the room temperature to rise
to a desired level, men wearing gas masks and bearing canisters of the required
preparation clamber up on to the roof of the building. They open trap doors,
then shake the contents of the cans (which are marked
Zyklon B –
for use against vermin) –
a product of a Hamburg-based company –
into the traps and then quickly retire. This product is a cyanide mixture
which is known to turn, at a predetermined temperature, into a noxious and
highly effective poisonous gas. After only three minutes, every single inhabitant
in the chamber is dead, and nobody has been known to survive the ordeal. The
chamber is then opened and aired by men who, for obvious reasons, must still
wear gas masks. After five minutes it is deemed safe, and new men appear –
prisoners – who cart the bodies on flat trucks to the furnace rooms
where the burning takes place. The hearths of the furnaces are charged with
coke. Once the cremation chamber has been brought to a good red heat (approximately
800° C), the corpses are introduced. They burn rapidly. As soon as the
remains of the corpses have fallen through the grid to the ash-collection
channel below, they can be pulled forwards by means of a scraper, towards
the ash-removal door. Here, they should be left for another twenty minutes
to disintegrate fully before being scraped out and into a container. In the
meantime, further corpses can be introduced into the chambers. All bones will
have disintegrated, but some small particles may remain. The ash is white
and is easily scattered.

Once Gerry returned to England, he wrote her many imaginary letters.
Dear
Eva, I think I ought to explain . . .
But he never sent any of them, preferring
instead to believe that the strange girl would soon forget him. However, his
conscience troubled him. If, when he asked her, she had said yes, then he
was convinced that he would have made whatever arrangements were necessary.
He would have told her everything, and then taken a chance and brought her
back to England. They might have had to wait a couple of years before they
could actually get married, but he'd have done it. That's what everyone wanted
after the war. A new beginning. A chance to put things behind them. To begin
again. But when he got back and saw Noreen and the kiddie, he began to write
the letters in his mind. I mean, Noreen wasn't a glamour piece or anything,
but he had made a commitment.
Dear Eva, I think I ought to explain
. . . It was silly, really. For one thing, how could he have afforded it?
It was bloody hard work to get a job again. Nobody gave a bugger that you'd
served king and country. So bleeding what, mate? You were over there with
your foreign crumpet, while we were stuck here getting bombed on. Triumphant
England didn't live up to his expectations. Things were bad for everyone.
And so eventually he stopped writing imaginary letters. And, soon after, he
saw Iris, who was dancing unconsciously to the static crackle of a wireless
as she rearranged cups on her tray. She was a waitress in the tea shop that
Gerry stopped in on his way home from the factory. It was the sign above the
door, which boasted 'A good selection of cakes and pastries', that first caught
his attention. Gerry liked the familiar tinkle of the doorbell, then the pleasing
rush of warmly scented air as he edged his way in and found his usual seat
in the corner by the tall glass window. From this position, he could gaze
out at the tide of people who washed by in both directions, but inevitably
he was shaken from his day-dreaming by the elderly woman with her notepad
and her hair that was tied back in a frighteningly severe bun. She took his
order and, soon after, his tea would arrive at the table with a clatter. And
then one day he saw the girl dancing as she rearranged cups on her tray, a
new girl with eyebrows plucked into dark arches. Gerry looked at his watch
and realized that they would be closing up in ten minutes, so he deliberately
waited until she came to his table to take away his cup. 'You're new here,
aren't you?' She smiled, and Gerry could now see just how young she was. Sixteen
at most. But she refused to reply. And so it went on, day after day, week
after week, with Gerry being unable to torment a conversation out of her reluctant
person. His sole knowledge of this girl's background was her name, Iris, which
he discovered only by overhearing the elderly woman shouting at her when the
girl appeared to be slacking. Eventually, Gerry accepted that his infatuation
with the girl was leading him nowhere, but it had served the function of removing
Eva from the front of his mind. He no longer peered anxiously down the hallway
in case a foreign-looking letter lay by the door, nor did he worry about whether
he should say something to Noreen about the Jewish girl. Gerry's conscience
no longer troubled him. Although he had given up hope of winning her over,
Gerry still sat in the tea shop, in the corner by the tall glass window, and
stared at his Iris. He particularly enjoyed watching her when she raised her
arms to tie back her hair. It occurred to him that young girls needed protecting.
But Iris would be fine. She knew how to look after herself.

I have made a friend. Bella. Bella with the dark complexion. Her eyes fenced
by crow's feet that mark her out as one who has toiled in a southern sun.
(My skin as white as paper.) They have given Bella an easy job, packing down
the top of the pits. I share my bowl of soup with her. Carry me, Bella, and
I will carry you. Bella tells me there are rumours that we will not win. She
speaks as though everything is a confession. I tell Bella, no. No. You must
see your parents again. You are only seventeen. We lie together in the hut.
I look at my Bella. Her brown eyes clouded by cataracts. I am twenty. Bella,
I want to live to love. To believe in something. To believe in somebody. Because
of Bella, I hope with reckless vigour. Men do not know the landscape of women.
Your hair is growing back. I am a virgin. Tell me, have you had a boyfriend?
A kiss? Yes? In the folding places of your body? I need a piece of bread.
We need a piece of bread. But somebody must remain alive to tell all of this,
Bella. It is senseless to die now. I need to see Margot again. And then, one
morning I look across at my Bella with her sleep-shaped hair, and I know that
soon I will be on my own again. Life continues to drain from her. Too weak,
now, to steal warmth from my body. I press close to her, as though my life
might pass into her body like a fever. But she continues to leak. Seepage.
The most undignified of all diseases. Flooding the cracks in the wood, dripping
into the faces of the women below. Speckling them. It is winter now. Our second
winter. And bitterly cold. The roll-call. I am going to be late for roll-call.
Dear Bella. Bella with fine straws stuck through the holes that pierce her
ears, keeping them in readiness for the earrings that she still hopes for.
Dear Bella, it is easy to be selected. Swollen legs? A forgotten head kerchief?
A soiled uniform? Step forwards. Goodbye. A scratch on a leg? Puffed with
malnutrition? Step forwards. Goodbye. A flick of a riding crop to the right.
Goodbye. The other women, they cry now, please, Eva. Eva, please. Bella is
gone. My Bella is gone. She is no more. Eva, she is no more. Colour your hair
with this charcoal. Twenty and I am going grey! Look strong. Get up. Fresh
air. Fresh air. The other women. Their feet wrapped in straw that is held
in place with cloth and string. Dirty spoons attached to their waists by cords.
I ask them, are you still women? Look at my swollen feet. The other women
drag me away from my Bella. I am screaming. Look! In my Bella's crabbed hands
there are still signs of life. I cannot leave her like this. A cage of bone.
As I stand in the courtyard, I know that I will have to find Mama again. The
wind continues to collaborate. It makes us shiver in front of these poorly
educated people. I will have to find Mama again. Meanwhile, dear Bella. Bella
with the dark complexion. Dry my face with your breath. Your refusal of this
world has not gone unnoticed. Death will want me too. Death is hungry. Always
hungry.